Broken Glass Boys
by TolkienGirl
Summary: "Do you have a favorite brother?" Bing gets the words out and then covers her eyes with her hands. "I'm so sorry." [James, and his brothers. Fixing on the Hour-verse vignette.]


**A/N: I have a lot of feelings about James Bennett.**

James keeps trying to explain to Bing, in bits and pieces, why his brothers need to feel at home.

She tells him he doesn't have to.

.

The old house gets demolished on a Tuesday. Levi and Cody go to watch, and they take pictures. They send them to James, because he is the keeper of family records, or something.

They're probably too scared to send them to Eli.

James is at work. Mr. Phillips set him up in a managing position at a bodyshop an hour south of Albany. Lots of traffic from the Thruway, but their house is on five acres of green and Bing loves it there.

He's losing track of his own thoughts. He's at work, when the house goes down, and he just turns his ears and eyes to the whirrs and crashes that are going on around him. No need to fill in ones happening upstate.

James is sentimental, but he's quiet about it. He always thought he'd keep that house, fix it up, make it somewhere Mom actually wanted to be.

His phone chimes. It's a text from Eli. Apparently Levi had sent him one of the pictures by mistake.

James wipes his hands on his jeans, sets about texting back.

He's used to damage control.

.

"You look tired, babe."

He's put in a couple decades of saying, _It's nothing_ , but now, he doesn't have to. "They knocked the house down today."

Bing sinks down beside him, hands clasping his. There is a window above the couch. There are windows everywhere. The sunset is flaming through her hair. "I'm so sorry," she says. Bing always speaks with all the sincerity of a force of nature. "That must hurt so much."

.

First comes Eli.

James is not one of those jealous kids. He loves, and loves, and loves. Mom, Dad. Eli.

(He loves Eli best.)

They build a tree-fort together when they are nine and eleven. They do it badly. Dad makes fun of it, which just about kills Eli, but James just knows that Dad doesn't know much how to build one either.

There is space to live, James thinks, between _perfect_ and _best you can do._

.

"I'm alright," he says. "It was a house."

"It was your home."

He puts an arm around Bing. "I couldn't save it," he says. And if he closes his eyes, he should be able to call to mind the sagging gray clapboard, should be able to see the sun on the roof. What he sees is his brothers.

.

"I have a terrible question," Bing announces gravely, one day. It is only the week after their wedding. "I really shouldn't ask it."

She's nibbling on her lower lip. James loves, and loves, and loves. "You can ask it," he tells her. "It's OK. You can ask me anything."

"Do you have a favorite brother?" Bing gets the words out and then covers her eyes with her hands. "I'm so sorry."

 _Eli._ "I'm not allowed to," James answers.

Because—well, she said he didn't have to explain.

.

Mark was a screecher for the first year of his life. Eli, who _was_ jealous, looked at him with vengeful dark eyes and huddled possessively against Mom.

"You have to be nice to him."

"Don't want to."

Eli is only going on three. A _baby_.

(James is only five.)

"Eli."

"No."

But Eli falls asleep in Mark's crib anyway, that night. James wishes _he_ was small enough.

.

His phone rings, late.

"You up?"

"Yeah," James says, because he is now, and he doesn't mind being woken up.

Eli doesn't say anything for a long time, which means he's pissed or hurt or some Eli-specific combination of the two, and if this was a couple years ago they'd be in the same room, but it's not.

Mom didn't say anything about the house at dinner. Eli isn't likely to say anything now.

They are very alike. James has always known this. He does not know why one loves him and the other—well. He supposes Mom loves him too.

"It was just a house."

 _Huh._ Eli _can_ still surprise him.

"It's still sad." James rubs a hand over the back of his neck. Bing's curls are like a cloud on her pillow. Downstairs, Mom hasn't turned her light off yet.

"I hated that place." Eli sounds desolate. "I hated it so much."

"I know." James waits. He has always been good at that. He hears Eli pacing the floor. It's a Tuesday. Eli must be alone; Darcy will be staying in the city.

James isn't sure how they make that work, but they do. Nothing about Eli and Darcy makes logical sense. People must have said the same thing about magnets, once.

"Have you heard from Dad lately?"

James has not. Although, he has heard from Dad more lately than Eli has. James is Dad's second favorite, after Levi, and that is just the way of the world.

 _I'm not allowed to._

"I think he's doing OK."

Eli mutters something unintelligible. Then he says goodnight.

.

Cody and Levi are sort of bundled together in James' mind, and he feels guilty about it. But he was seven and eight-and-a-half when they were born, and after that everything was just all mayhem, all the time.

Cody is scrawny and fussy. Levi is a pudgy tank of a kid who crawls early, walks early, and never stops moving.

Eli frequently decides that he Hates Them All and storms off to his room. This escalates until his mid-teens.

(Maybe it never really stops.)

.

"I'm an awful brother."

"You're not." James actually rolls out from under the truck to stare up at Eli. If he were on his feet, he'd notice the uncomfortable reality that they're the same height now. Eli had been such a shrimp—Dad's words, not James'—for years. At fifteen, that is, apparently, all over.

"I am." Eli has a stubborn set to his jaw that looks awfully like Dad's.

James stifles even the most patient of sighs. "Why?"

"I don't like them." His voice hasn't quite evened out yet. "Only you." The last is a mumble. Eli has learned at the school of Joel Bennett not to show too much sentiment.

It's never occurred to James, not to like them. But it isn't some unforgivable sin on Eli's part, either. "You don't have to like them." He pauses. The Joel Bennett school is effective, but he says the next words anyway. "You just have to love them."

.

"It was real, you know."

Bing says it over breakfast. Mom is eating in her room. She does that a lot. James wishes he could make it different, but he's not Eli. And Eli shouldn't have to be—

Anyway.

"What was real?" He reaches out to put his hand over Bing's. Her hand is a lot smaller than his. He loves that. The contrast. She does too, but it's the artist in her. There's no artist in James.

"The house," Bing says. "It was real. As real as you need it to be. All of you."

.

The place is a wound in the earth, and yet it is also like nothing ever stood that at all. He catches a breath when he sees it. They're on their way to Harry's place, on Netherfield road.

He doesn't miss the house, he decides, all of a moment. If he's being sensible, it's not the kind of thing to miss.

.

The tree-fort falls down three summers after they build it.

"A bad job after all," Eli proclaims, kicking ruefully at the boards. His shoulders are sharp, angled up. James wishes his whole family didn't always look like they're bracing for a punch.

"It wasn't. It was ours, for a while." James feels like he should try to explain it.


End file.
